Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, wader, Doctor RJ, rfall, JML9999 and Man Oh Man. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke and jlms qkw.
OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00AM Eastern Time.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
From the New York Times: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Is Guilty on All 30 Counts in Boston Marathon Bombing
Aloke Chakravarty, a prosecutor, addressed jurors during closing arguments in the Boston Marathon bombings trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, second from right, at the federal courthouse in Boston on Monday.
In the silent well of Courtroom Nine, a clerk read out the verdicts: Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. The word echoed in the courtroom as the clerk pronounced it 30 times, once for each of 30 counts.
By the end of the 25-minute roll call of charges, a federal jury here had left no doubt how thoroughly it sided with the government against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in connection with the 2013 bombings at the Boston Marathon. Mr. Tsarnaev, 21, a failing college student and the youngest child in a dispersed immigrant family, stood without expression, his arms folded in front of him, flanked by his lawyers.
The verdicts set the stage for a second, more contentious phase of the trial in which the same jury will decide whether to sentence Mr. Tsarnaev to life in prison or death.
From the
Washington Post:
Poll shows vast majority of Cubans welcome closer ties with U.S.
The vast majority of Cubans welcome warmer relations with the United States, holding high expectations that closer ties pledged by the two countries will shake up the island’s troubled economy, according to a new survey of Cuban citizens. But they are doubtful that the diplomatic detente will bring political reforms to their Communist country.
The poll of residents on the island shows a people unhappy with the political system, eager to end the U.S. embargo and disenchanted with their state-run economy. More than half of Cubans say they would like to leave the country for good if they had the chance.
The survey, done through 1,200 in-person interviews, was conducted in March by the Miami-based research firm Bendixen & Amandi International on behalf of the networks Univision Noticias and Fusion. It is being reported in collaboration with The Washington Post.
From
USA Today:
South Carolina shooting sheds doubt on police
The video of a South Carolina police officer shooting a black man in the back as he ran away gives victims of police misconduct new ammunition to overturn common assumptions about police brutality, but families of victims and civil rights advocates wonder if it will be enough to spur real change.
Police who shoot and kill suspects often escape prosecution because the criminal justice systems places a high value on an officer's word and often accepts their narrative of events, says attorney Benjamin Crump, who represents the family of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager who was killed by a Ferguson, Mo., police officer last summer. A grand jury declined to indict the officer.
In the most recent incident, North Charleston Police Officer Michael Slager, 33, who claimed he shot Walter Scott, 50, in self-defense after Scott grabbed his Taser, is facing a murder charge after a video surfaced that disputed his claim. "They use this narrative all the time," Crump said. " 'I was in fear of my life. I felt threatened. They reached for my weapon.' That's how they justify killing us. Now that it's been exposed with this case, will America challenge it?"
From the
Los Angeles Times:
Scientology head's father was spied on, police report says
For 18 months private detectives tracked every move made by the father of David Miscavige, leader of the Church of Scientology, as they eavesdropped, spied on his emails and planted a GPS unit on his car, according to police records.
The church paid the two detectives $10,000 a week through an intermediary, the records indicate, all because Miscavige feared that his father would divulge too much about the organization's activities.
The episode, detailed in documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times, is the latest in a decades-long series of allegations that the church has intimidated, harassed or abused current and former members, at times going to great lengths to dissuade them from discussing their experiences or knowledge of the secretive religion.
From the
Wall Street Journal:
Shell to Buy BG Group for About $70 Billion
Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s $70 billion deal to buy BG Group PLC marks the most aggressive step yet in the competition to be the world’s dominant supplier of liquefied natural gas—a fuel with a fast-growing and increasingly global market.
The deal, announced Wednesday, would vault Shell far ahead of rivals like Exxon Mobil Corp and Chevron Corp. in the race to build market share for LNG, a chilled form of natural gas used for electricity generation and home heating.
The tie-up is a bet that countries like China, India and others in the developing world will move toward cleaner burning fuels like natural gas instead of coal amid growing pressure to curb emissions. And it is a gamble that Asian markets will come to rely on U.S. exports of the product, when the first shipments leave the country—expected sometime in late 2015 or early next year.
Exxon Mobil estimates that the global trade in liquefied natural gas will more than triple through 2040, to nearly 100 billion cubic feet a day—roughly 40% higher than current U.S. gas output. The company projects that countries throughout Asia and the Pacific will import half of the gas they consume by 2040, with LNG making up 80% of imports.
From
BBC News:
Obama calls for end to 'gay conversion therapies'
US President Barack Obama has condemned psychiatric therapies designed to "repair" gay, lesbian and transgender youth.
Mr Obama's statement was in response to an online petition calling for a ban on conversion therapies, which gained over 120,000 signatures in three months.
The petition was inspired by Leelah Alcorn, a 17-year-old transgender youth who committed suicide in December.
Some conservative groups and religious doctors support conversion therapy.
"We share your concern about its potentially devastating effects on the lives of transgender as well as gay, lesbian, bisexual, and queer youth," White House advisor Valerie Jarrett wrote in response to the petition. "As part of our dedication to protecting America's youth, this administration supports efforts to ban the use of conversion therapy for minors."
From
Al Jazeera:
ISIL takeover of Palestinian camp in Syria a 'siege within a siege'
For the last remaining Palestinian residents of Yarmouk Camp in Damascus, this week’s takeover by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant is a “siege within a siege.”
For almost two years, rebel-held Yarmouk, a Palestinian refugee settlement turned residential neighborhood just 10 minutes from the heart of the Syrian capital, has been suffocating under the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Water has been cut off entirely, available only when aid groups sneak it in, while medical and food supplies are scarce. Once known as the capital of the Palestinian diaspora, Yarmouk’s pre-war population of 180,000 has shrunk to just 18,000, with about 200 people starving to death since the blockade began in 2013, the United Nations says.
But the camp’s plight worsened on April 1, when ISIL fighters surged into Yarmouk from their nearby stronghold of Hajr al-Aswad and swiftly overpowered its Palestinian defenders, a Hamas-aligned militia called Aknaf Beit al-Maqdis. As of Thursday, ISIL had taken over 70 percent of the camp, assisted, sources said, by elements of the Nusra Front — Al-Qaeda’s franchise in Syria and, normally, ISIL's chief rival.
About 2,000 people managed to escape since ISIL infiltrated, but the rest "are now trapped in a siege within a siege,” said Salim Salamah, a Yarmouk native who left in 2012 and now heads the Palestinian League for Human Rights in Syria from his home in Sweden.
From the
New York Times:
New Ground, Literally, in South China Sea
Satellite image shows work on an emerging artificial island at Mischief Reef in the South China Sea.
The clusters of Chinese vessels busily dredge white sand and pump it onto partly submerged coral, aptly named Mischief Reef, transforming it into an island.
Over a matter of weeks, satellite photographs show the island growing bigger, its few shacks on stilts replaced by buildings. What appears to be an amphibious warship, capable of holding 500 to 800 troops, patrols the reef’s southern opening.
China has long asserted ownership of the archipelago in the South China Sea known as the Spratly Islands, also claimed by at least three other countries, including the Philippines, an American ally. But the series of detailed photographs taken of Mischief Reef shows the remarkable speed, scale and ambition of China’s effort to literally gain ground in the dispute.
They show that since January, China has been dredging enormous amounts of sand from around the reef and using it to build up land mass — what military analysts at the Pentagon are calling “facts on the water” — hundreds of miles from the Chinese mainland.
From
The Guardian:
Athens insists 'open wound' of German war reparations must be closed
The row between Germany and Greece over war reparations has intensified after Athens hit back at Berlin’s description of its demand for a staggering €278.7bn (£202bn) in compensation as “stupid”.
Insisting that Greece’s leftist-led administration had “a historical duty” to seek compensation for atrocities committed by Nazi forces between 1941-44, the politician in charge of the campaign said on Wednesday that he welcomed the German reaction. “The response may have been ‘this is foolish, you have plucked this number out of the blue’ but for me it was also very positive,” Costas Isychos, the deputy defence minister, told the Guardian. “There was an admission that despite disagreeing with the figure a debt is owed, and that is very good.”
On Tuesday, Germany’s economy minister and vice-chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, not only branded the demand boneheaded, but suggested it had been motivated by Athens’ interest in squeezing a bit of leeway out of its eurozone partners to overcome its debt crisis. “And this leeway has nothing to do with the second world war or reparations,” said Gabriel, who leads the Social Democrats, the junior partner in the ruling coalition of the chancellor, Angela Merkel.
From the
Associated Press:
Iran sends navy vessels to waters near Yemen, raising stakes amid Saudi-led military campaign
Iran dispatched a destroyer and another naval ship to waters off Yemen on Wednesday, raising the stakes amid a Saudi-led air campaign targeting Iranian-backed Shiite rebels fighting forces loyal to the country's embattled president.
The Iranian maneuver came as the U.S. deepened its support for the Saudi-led coalition, boosting weapons supplies and intelligence-sharing and carrying out the first U.S. aerial refueling mission of coalition fighter jets.
The Iranian warships were sent to the strategic Bab al-Mandab strait as part of an anti-piracy campaign to "safeguard naval routes for vessels in the region," Iranian Rear Adm. Habibollah Sayyari was quoted as saying by the English-language state broadcaster Press TV.
Securing navigation in the narrow strait was a key reason for the Saudi-led air and maritime blockade that began after Yemen's internationally recognized president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, fled the country two weeks ago as the rebels closed in on Aden, Yemen's second-largest city where he was based.
From
CNBC:
California's four-year drought starts a 'water truck' boom
Water truck delivery at home just outside Clovis, California.
Neeley Keeney is a popular guy in the San Joaquin Valley: He runs a water delivery service and is working seven days a week to keep up with a booming business in the drought-parched region.
"I used to do the construction business but totally quit that," said Keeney, co-owner of NRK Services in Sanger, California. "Now I'm all potable water and selling to residents, and business is the best it's ever been."
Keeney regularly fills up his 2,500-gallon water tank truck from a city-owned fire hydrant in Clovis, a city northeast of Fresno. He charges customers $200 to $500 for a truckload of water, delivered, and the cost he pays for the water is a mere "five bucks to load."
From
Bloomberg:
YouTube to Give Viewers Ad-Free Option for Monthly Fee
Google Inc. plans to offer a subscriber version of YouTube as soon as this year, letting viewers see millions of videos without having to sit through ads.
Revenue from the new feature, which will put Google into more direct competition with streaming services such as Netflix Inc. and Hulu LLC, will be shared with video creators, Google told them in an e-mail that was obtained by Bloomberg. The service may debut by the end of the year, said a person with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren't public.
"By creating a new paid offering, we'll generate a new source of revenue that will supplement your fast growing advertising service," the letter said.
From
Reuters:
Asia steadies after surge, dollar supported after Fed minutes
Asian stocks steadied on Thursday following Wednesday's surge, while the dollar drew support from minutes of the Federal Reserve's last meeting showing the Fed was still on course to hike interest rates this year.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was little changed after surging 1.8 percent the previous day to a seven-month high. Japan's Nikkei nudged up 0.2 percent after hitting a 15-year high the previous day. Australian and South Korean shares stood little changed. Wall Street only posted modest gains overnight after a volatile session following the Fed minutes, failing to give Asia a strong lead.
Fed officials acknowledged risks from overseas and a weak start to the year at their March meeting but remained confident enough in the strength of the recovery to continue laying the groundwork for an interest rate hike later this year, the minutes showed.
From
NBC News:
Apple Updates Bring 300 Emoji, 'Photos' for Mac
Apple released the latest versions of its Mac OS X and iOS operating systems on Wednesday, which come with more than 300 ethnically diverse emoji. The OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 update also features Apple's highly anticipated Photos app, which was originally announced last summer. Photos syncs with Apple's iCloud Photo Library to save hard drive space, storing full-sized images on the cloud while storing smaller versions on user's devices. It also features a new interface and auto-crop tool, as well as most of the tools found in iPhoto. Apple's iOS 8.3 update for the iPhone and iPad includes the new emoji, additional languages like Swedish and Thai for Siri, improvements for Messages, and fixes for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity.
From the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
Masters: Woods' return stirs up excitement
Lindsey Vonn watches as Tiger Woods hugs his children Charlie, left and Sam during a practice round for the Masters golf tournament.
As if by design, Rory McIlroy, the No. 1 player in the world, walked into the interview room at the Augusta National Golf Club just moments after the player who once spent nearly 700 weeks as the top player on the planet, Tiger Woods.
And, in what is a microcosm of the top story line that is playing out at the Masters, more than half the crowd that packed the room for Woods’ first official news conference in his return to competitive golf left for the player who is trying to grab his own piece of history with a Tiger-esque achievement.
So much for the focus of the first major tournament of 2015 being on McIlroy.
Not when Woods is back at Augusta National, returning from a self-imposed leave of absence because of poor play.
From
ESPN:
Mark Cuban says 'horrible' state of college basketball hurting NBA
The "horrible" state of college basketball is hurting the NBA, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban declared.
Cuban said he doesn't enjoy watching the college game, but his bigger concern is the physical, slow-down style that has become common in the NCAA results in prospects who are poorly prepared to make the jump to the NBA.
"If they want to keep kids in school and keep them from being pro players, they're doing it the exact right way by having the 35-second shot clock and having the game look and officiated the way it is," Cuban said Wednesday night. "Just because kids don't know how to play a full game of basketball."
From
Wired:
You Want the Apple Watch to Succeed
Apple Watch reviews hit the internet today and the response is mixed. Although people praise its build quality, styling, and gorgeous screen—and say it does indeed help you use your phone less—critics complain the Watch is glitchy. Slow. Its battery life sucks. Apps take too long to load, if they load at all. You might want one, but you don’t need one. It’s not for everyone. And, for what it is, it’s expensive—much too expensive.
Nevertheless, when the company begins taking pre-orders tomorrow, diehard Apple fans will clamor for Cupertino’s latest signature product. They will harbor grand hopes for its possibilities. That’s the power Apple has. The Apple II changed how we use computers forever. The iPod (and iTunes) revolutionized music. The iPhone is ubiquitous and essential. Because this is Apple, we can’t help but measure the Watch against those immense successes. To triumph, it must be more than a normal, expensive accessory, like well-crafted headphones.
But what if the non-diehards decide that’s all the Apple Watch is? If lukewarm early reviews keep consumers out of stores, or if major glitches alienate early adopters, the Apple Watch could be a bust, at least by Apple standards. Even with record revenues and a gilded image, such a hit would hurt Apple. The funny thing is, it could end up hurting us even more.
A flop could bring us more of the same. A big win could encourage Apple to be even bolder.
From
Newsweek:
'Mommy Blogger' Lacey Spears Gets 20 Years for Killing Son With Salt
A suburban New York woman who wrote a blog about motherhood was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison by a judge on Wednesday for murdering her 5-year-old son through salt poisoning so she could use his illness to gain social media attention.
Lacey Spears, 27, who chronicled her son Garnett's illnesses on a personal blog called "Garnett's Journey" and other social media, was convicted by a jury in White Plains, New York, last month of second-degree murder in his 2014 death at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, New York.
Prosecutors said Spears loaded the hospitalized boy's feeding tube with a lethal amount of salt and kept on blogging.
From
Slate:
Personal Exemptions From Reason
Outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases such as whooping cough and measles are increasing in frequency, and states across the country have introduced legislation to address the danger to public health caused by parents who refuse to vaccinate their children.
These state legislators are re-evaluating religious and “personal belief” exemptions. Many of these exemptions are claimed by parents concerned about a purported link between vaccines and autism (which has been debunked many times over) rather than by parents with sincerely held religious beliefs that prohibit vaccination ... One of the most heated legislative debates on this issue is currently raging in California. The legislation, SB-277, aims to eliminate the personal belief exemption. It is sponsored by Richard Pan, a California state senator and pediatrician who previously sponsored AB-2109. That bill, which required that parents opposed to vaccination meet with a doctor who would discuss their concerns and sign their exemption, was the first thing to make even a slight impact on California's steadily rising exemption rates. Many of the personal belief exemptions in child-care and day-care facilities—the youngest cohort tracked—were eliminated, but an approximately equal number of personal medical exemptions replaced the belief-based exemptions.
We ran an analysis on the 2014–15 personal belief exemption data, available from the California Department of Public health here. The goal was to investigate the demographic and political affiliation trends underlying these exemptions. The individual school data was geocoded and then grouped by census tract and California State Assembly districts. There are 80 assembly districts, and political affiliations for these districts are tracked. Census tract data was used to identify median household income. Both political affiliation and income data were broken down into quartiles.
The findings confirm that anti-vaccination is a bipartisan issue. However, the investigation into wealth is telling. While strongly Republican districts maintain relatively high personal belief exemption rates across all income levels, rates rise sharply for strongly Democratic districts where the median income reaches about $68,500 or higher. Put another way, higher incomes appear to have a more pronounced effect in strongly Democratic districts.
From
The Smithsonian:
The Moon Was Formed in a Smashup Between Earth and a Near Twin
When young planets collide.
The moon was born in the collision of a Mars-sized body and the early Earth, but beyond that, much about the world we see in our skies every night is still a mystery. After 61 missions, including six astronaut visits that collected samples of moon rocks, many questions remain, including how much of the moon is made from that lost planet's leftovers, and how much was stolen from Earth? Answering these questions could offer fresh insights into the evolution of both celestial bodies.
Now, scientists in France and Israel have found evidence that the smaller body that smashed into the proto-Earth was likely made of similar stuff to our home world. Also, according to their computer models, the current composition of lunar material is best explained if whatever hit early Earth formed nearby. Two additional studies suggest that both bodies then built up a veneer of extra material as smaller protoplanets continued to bombard the young system, but Earth picked up much more of this later coating.
According to the "giant impact hypothesis," the moon formed about 4.5 billion years ago, when a planet-like object about a tenth of Earth's current mass slammed into our planet. Simulations and recent studies of moon rocks suggest that the moon should be mostly made from the remains of the impactor, nicknamed Theia. This would explain why the moon seems to be made of material that looks a lot like Earth's mantle, as seen in rock samples and mineral maps.
The problem is that planets tend to have distinct compositions. Mars, Mercury and big asteroids such as Vesta all have somewhat different ratios of various elements. If Theia was formed someplace else in the solar system, its makeup should have been rather different from Earth's, and the bulk composition of the moon shouldn't look so similar to Earth's mantle.
From
The Atlantic:
The Civil War Isn't Over
In 1867, Edward A. Pollard, a former Confederate partisan and editor of the Richmond Examiner, published The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates, one of the first of the thousands of books that have contested the meaning of the Civil War’s results. Pollard issued a warning to all who would ever try to shape the meaning and memory of the war or of Reconstruction policies and their legacies. “All that is left the South,” wrote Pollard, “is the war of ideas.” The war may have decided “the restoration of the Union and the excision of slavery,” he declared, “but the war did not decide Negro equality.” Wars of ideas, hopefully always conducted with civility and without weapons, are the essence of republicanism and democracy. But every time a federalist such as Senator Ted Cruz of Texas vows to “stand on principle” and “stand up for liberty” in order to “reestablish the crucial boundary of dual sovereignty,” or pledges to protect “self-government” through a “return to our founding principles of limited government and local control,” his audience should be alert not only for political ambition, not only for policy positions advancing the liberties of the powerful against those of the powerless, but for an effort to push the present back into the lost causes of the past.
History may seem to have its lulls when it slows down and impinges less on our lives; then we are hit with massive crises, often to our utter surprise, and history speeds up beyond human comprehension. It is impossible to grasp a turning point in history until it has happened, and understanding it may take a generation or more. But history never stops, and although it is an ancient human utopian dream to live above and beyond it, or to ideologically control its pace, only fools think they can turn off its gears. Past and present are always utterly interdependent. Such was the claim of the great historian Marc Bloch, murdered in the Holocaust, about a “solidarity of the ages.” “Misunderstanding of the present,” wrote Bloch, “is the inevitable consequence of ignorance of the past. But a man may wear himself out just as fruitlessly in seeking to understand the past, if he is totally ignorant of the present.” Wars end loudly and in ruins, and sometimes on silent, beautiful spring landscapes such as the surrender field at Appomattox; but history keeps happening. Making “men equal on earth in the sight of other men,” to borrow again from Baldwin, is a long-term proposition, and for that matter, a definition of the meaning of America.
From
Salon:
We can’t take a joke anymore: The inflated dangers of pushing the envelope and crossing the line
I won’t start by asking if you’ve heard the one about the comic whose four-year-old tweets came back to bite him in the ass. That would be a lame, jokey way to begin a discussion of lame jokes, and lately we’ve decided to take jokes very, very seriously indeed. Whether we are the American Jewish Congress — denouncing Trevor Noah, the new host of “The Daily Show,” as a “sexist anti-semite” — or Patton Oswalt — defending Noah with a series of 53 tweets forming a labored parody of the contortions today’s jokesters must undergo to avoid offending anyone — we have loaded down one of the humblest forms of literature with some pretty heavy baggage.
How did the joke become so fraught, so potentially combustible? It’s not just the professionally funny who stand in peril of getting burned. The week before Noah’s stupid tweets came to light, author Jon Ronson had been making the rounds, talking about his new book “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed.” Several of the most egregious examples he found featured ordinary people whose lives were wrecked by social media, all for the sin of cracking bad jokes.
Most notoriously, there was publicist Justine Sacco, who, trying to make fun of the attitudes many clueless, privileged white Westerners hold toward Africans, ended up being mistaken for the very sort of person she intended to mock. And then there was poor Lindsey Stone, a caregiver for adults with learning difficulties who had a running joke with a friend where they took goofy photos of themselves in front of signs, disobeying whatever the sign ordered the public to do. After posing next to such a sign at Arlington National Cemetery, she somehow ended up serving as the symbol, to countless irate souls across the Internet, of a “dumb feminist” who “hates soldiers.” Both Sacco and Stone lost their jobs as a result.
From
Vice:
Institutionalized: Mental Health Behind Bars
America's relationship with its mentally ill population continues to suffer as a result of inadequacies in the country's mental health care system.
For the mentally ill in Chicago, the effects of this inadequacy are felt on a magnified scale, as budget cuts and a lack of community-based mental health resources have left these individuals with minimal support. More often than not, this means being repeatedly swept up into the criminal justice system for low-level, non-violent crimes
VICE News takes an immersive look at this issue by going inside the Cook County Jail and speaking with community members on Chicago's south side.
From
The Daily Dot:
How the 'Sad Puppies' Internet campaign gamed the Hugo Awards
Everyone loves to say that awards ceremonies are rigged, meaningless, or just blatant popularity contests. In the case of the most prestigious honor in the sci-fi/fantasy community, this kind of accusation now feels worryingly true.
Each year, the Hugo Awards are voted on by paid members of Worldcon, the World Science Fiction Convention. Fans nominate their favorite books, movies, and commentators, and the most popular choices make it onto a shortlist of five nominees per category. People then vote for the eventual winners, which are revealed at Worldcon in August.
This year's nominees were announced on Saturday, and most of them came directly from a Gamergate-affiliated campaign known as Sad Puppies. By bloc-voting for a specific slate of anti-progressive authors, editors, and fans, the Sad Puppies managed to game the selection process in every major category. And yes, they did choose that name for themselves.
From
io9:
This Isn't A Chameleon. It's Two Women Expertly Covered In Body Paint
Johannes Stötter is a fine art body painter who creates incredible illusions with his paints and his performers, transforming human bodies into various animals. This chameleon is particularly spectacular, with two women forming different halves of the chameleon's body.
From
Vanity Fair:
The Inside Story of the Civil War for the Soul of NBC News
As she left Fili’s office around 3:30, [Deborah] Turness learned the startling news: the most important person at the network, the face of NBC News, its anchorman Brian Williams, had apparently been exaggerating an anecdote about coming under fire in a U.S. Army helicopter during the Iraq war in 2003. A reporter from the military newspaper Stars and Stripes had called about it that morning. Williams was supposed to talk to him off the record in an effort to determine what the reporter planned to write. Instead, to the dismay of NBC’s P.R. staff, Williams had gone on the record and admitted he hadn’t been telling the truth, not only on a Nightly News broadcast the previous week but also over the years at public appearances and on talk shows.
Stunned, Turness was still trying to grasp the gravity of the situation when the Stars and Stripes story went online. At that point her biggest concern was the apology Williams was preparing to read to viewers on his broadcast that evening. He was already taping segments as he and Turness began swapping e-mails on its all-important wording. Turness and the other executives who had gotten involved quickly became frustrated, as they would remain for days, with Williams’s inability to explain himself. “He couldn’t say the words ‘I lied,’ ” recalls one NBC insider. “We could not force his mouth to form the words ‘I lied.’ He couldn’t explain what had happened. [He said,] ‘Did something happen to [my] head? Maybe I had a brain tumor, or something in my head?’ He just didn’t know. We just didn’t know. We had no clear sense what had happened. We got the best [apology] we could get.”
And that was a problem. Because the apology Williams read on the air that evening not only failed to limit the damage to his reputation, and to NBC News, its elliptical wording—“I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago”—made a bad situation worse, inflaming a crisis that led a week later to Williams’s suspension for six months. In early March, Pat Fili became the scandal’s second victim, pushed aside to make room for a former NBC News chief, Andrew Lack, whose return, network executives fervently hope, will restore morale and bring some much-needed stability to a news division that desperately needs it. Williams’s stunning fall was only the worst of a string of embarrassing episodes that have brought NBC News, long one of the gold standards of television news, to its knees.
From
CBS News:
"Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer to retire this summer
Bob Schieffer, the anchor of CBS News' "Face the Nation," announced Wednesday that he will retire this summer after more than 50 years of working in journalism.
Schieffer, who is 78, has been with CBS News for 46 years. 2015 marked his 24th year anchoring "Face the Nation," which celebrated its 60th anniversary last year.
"Because that was where it all started for me, I wanted this to be the place, and I wanted you all to be the first to know that this summer I'm going to retire," he said at the annual Schieffer Symposium at Texas Christian University, his alma mater.
"It's been a great adventure. You know, I'm one of the luckiest people in the world because as a little boy, as a young reporter, I always wanted to be a journalist, and I got to do that. And not many people get to do that, and I couldn't have asked for a better life or something that was more fun and more fulfilling."
From
The Hollywood Reporter:
'Fast 8' Nowhere Near Starting Line
Can Universal keep the family together? Furious 7's $392.3 million worldwide bow has made an eighth film in the racing saga a near certainty. But significant speed bumps exist. "Honestly, we're just bathing in the success of this," producer Neal Moritz tells THR. "We'll probably get together in a week or so to talk."
Universal chairman Donna Langley said in 2014 that the studio would like to make 10 films, and according to multiple sources, that remains the plan. But no writer has been hired for the next outing — not that the lack of a script has held back the franchise before. The films tend to be designed backward: After a release date is set, producer-star Vin Diesel, 47, considered the keeper of the flame, works with scribe Chris Morgan, Moritz and a director to hash out a story, coming up with elaborate set pieces then fleshing out a narrative to connect the sequences.
At this point, however, the director's chair seems to be vacant. Furious 7 helmer James Wan, 38, originally had signed a two-picture option when he joined the franchise, but after the grueling shoot that was required after the death of Paul Walker midway through production in 2013, he was released to make The Conjuring 2. Sources say he's set to shoot New Line's horror follow-up in October, so Universal could wait until he has completed work on that film ("I'm open to anything at this point," Wan tells THR), but it's also possible the studio will bring on someone else. Justin Lin, who guided the franchise through installments three to six, is busy with Star Trek 3. The studio is getting calls from agents, but a shortlist of possible directors isn't circling yet.
From
Vulture:
Full House, Coach, The X-Files: Why TV Remakes Are Everywhere Right Now
It’s been a banner spring for fans of long-dead TV shows. In just the past two weeks, there’s been news of two sitcom revivals (Full House, Coach), a drama comeback (The X-Files), a cult-sketch-series reunion (Mr. Show) and a variety series that may be reincarnated as a sitcom (The Muppet Show). These new projects join an already-airing update of The Odd Couple, this fall’s resurrection of Heroes, a planned 2016 return to Twin Peaks, and a slew of old movie titles being transformed into TV shows (Wet Hot American Summer) or pilots (Rush Hour, Problem Child, Minority Report, Uncle Buck). What’s odd about the small screen’s current infatuation with chasing ghosts is that it comes smack in the middle of what’s widely considered a new Golden Age for the medium. We expect TV today not only to be better than it used to be, but creatively superior to the feature film industry — where reboots and tentpoles are now the (depressing) rule. So why are programmers suddenly so interested in recycling?
Ironically, the fact that there are so many shows on TV right now — and so many good-to-great shows — may partially explain why small-screen suits are eager to bring back old ideas. “People are just desperate for attention,” one television-industry vet told Vulture. As we noted earlier this year, there were over 325 different scripted series produced for broadcast, cable, or streaming networks in 2014. While some of these shows bring new eyeballs to TV — Empire is the most obvious example — for the most part, the rapid explosion in original fare means networks are frequently settling for lower ratings, fewer breakout hits, and less advertising revenue. Worse, it’s now become a regular occurrence for heavily promoted new shows like Fox’s new comedy Weird Loners, NBC’s Allegiance, USA’s Dig, or A&E’s The Returned to open to scary-low premiere ratings. “There’s so much product, it’s hard [for something new] to stand out,” our industry vet explains. “Somebody sees a new series now and it’s, ‘So what?’ There’s ten a day.”
From the
New York Daily News:
Sofia Vergara talks struggles with her curvy frame: 'I wish I had fake boobs'
Sofia Vergara isn't that impressed with her ample assets.
The curvaceous "Modern Family" actress bared her cleavage on the cover of the May issue of Vanity Fair and dished to the mag about her constant struggle with having big breasts.
"My whole life, buying a bra was a nightmare," she said.
"What I used to do when I moved to L.A., I found places like Frederick's of Hollywood that make bras for (strippers)."
"Believe me, I wish I had fake boobs," she continued.
"I lay down and they completely go down … it's not fun."
From
Rolling Stone:
Frances Bean Cobain on Life After Kurt's Death: An Exclusive Q&A
One summer a few years ago, Frances Bean Cobain worked as an intern in the New York offices of Rolling Stone. Frances – the daughter of Nirvana singer-guitarist Kurt Cobain and an executive producer of the new HBO documentary on his life, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck – was "a 15-year-old Goth kid, so stoked," she recalls with a laugh during a recent interview for the cover story in our new issue. She remembers providing research assistance on a cover about the Jonas Brothers – and working in a cubicle across from a wall with a giant painting of Kurt. "Yeah," Frances says with a grin and mock-exasperation, "looking at my dad every day."
That is one of many stories and revelations that come out over almost three hours late one afternoon in early March, as Frances, now 22 and a visual artist, speaks publicly for the first time about her father; life after his death; her complex relationship with her mother, Courtney Love; and the new film, written, directed and produced by Brett Morgen. "Kurt got to the point where he eventually had to sacrifice every bit of who he was to his art, because the world demanded it of him," Frances says bluntly at one point. "I think that was one of the main triggers as to why he felt he didn't want to be here and everyone would be happier without him."
But "in reality, if he had lived," she goes on, "I would have had a dad. And that would have been an incredible experience."
From
Billboard:
'Uptown Funk' Ties for Second-Longest-Leading Hot 100 No. 1 of All Time
Mark Ronson's "Uptown Funk!," featuring Bruno Mars, ties for the second-longest-leading Billboard Hot 100 ever, ruling the chart for a 14th week. The smash also ties for the chart's longest command this century.
Plus, Wiz Khalifa vaults into the top 10 with "See You Again," from the box-office hit Furious 7. The track also takes over atop the Digital Songs chart.
As we do each Wednesday, let's look at all the songs in the top 10, and a bit further, on the sales/airplay/streaming-based Hot 100 (dated April 18).
"Funk," released on RCA Records, ties six other singles for the second-best run at No. 1 dating to the Hot 100's Aug. 4, 1958, launch, with only one song having led longer. Here's an updated ranking of the longest-leading Hot 100 No. 1s all-time:
Weeks at No. 1, Title, Artist, Date Reached No. 1
16, "One Sweet Day," Mariah Carey & Boyz II Men, Dec. 2, 1995
14 (to date), "Uptown Funk!," Ronson feat. Mars, Jan. 17, 2015
14, "I Gotta Feeling," the Black Eyed Peas, July 11, 2009
14, "We Belong Together," Mariah Carey, June 4, 2005
14, "Candle in the Wind 1997"/"Something About the Way You Look Tonight," Elton John, Oct. 11, 1997
14, "Macarena (Bayside Boys Mix)," Los Del Rio, Aug. 3, 1996
14, "I'll Make Love to You," Boyz II Men, Aug. 27, 1994
14, "I Will Always Love You," Whitney Houston, Nov. 28, 1992
"Funk" also ties for the longest stay at No. 1 on the Hot 100 this century. With 14 weeks on top, it matches the Black Eyed Peas' command with "I Gotta Feeling," the last song to lead for at least that long, in 2009. Mariah Carey also logged 14 weeks at No. 1 with "We Belong Together" in 2005.
From
Cosmo:
Watch Women Talk Openly About Their First Time Getting Their Periods
In a new video from underwear brand Dear Kate, 20 women discuss the first time they got their periods. The goal of the video, as explained in the YouTube description, "is to reframe the moment of getting your period so it's just as talked about and has just as much cachet as the time you first had sex, if not more."
One woman nailed the pubescent angst of it all: "I sort of looked down and my immediate and my immediate thought was, Oh shit! This is where I'm gonna die." Another talked about the reality of peer pressure and tampon FOMO: "I was in seventh grade and these were really intimidating girls and they looked at me and they were like, 'We don't use pads, we use tampons.'"
There were others who didn't know what was happening ("I thought, Huh. How did melted candy get into my underwear?") and some who got handy with things that were not meant to stop bleeding ("Um, I used my sock. And it really did the job.").